tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post4998858489650857278..comments2024-02-29T00:46:38.800-08:00Comments on Washingtons Blog: Credit Default Swaps - Love 'Em, Ban 'Em, or Tax 'Em?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-63861233029867190732009-09-30T14:28:58.776-07:002009-09-30T14:28:58.776-07:00Title might be more graphic (and literal) if it ha...Title might be more graphic (and literal) if it had been:<br /><br />"CDS: Love'Em, Ban 'Em, Tax 'Em, or Eat 'EmKen Kappelhttp://www.useforeclosurelaw.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-80961997568504862702009-09-30T09:28:19.155-07:002009-09-30T09:28:19.155-07:00Reform requires treating the causes. These are per...Reform requires treating the causes. These are permitting(1) institutions that are "too big to fail," creating moral hazard, (2) excessive leverage, (3), inadequate capital relative to risk, (4), accounting "ledgerdemain," and (5) lack of transparency.<br /><br />CDO's have a place in finance, just as insurance does in ordinary affairs. But would it be realistic for insurance companies to sell their policy obligations to parties who could not make good on them? Why should CDO's either be written or traded this way. CDO's are insurance and should be regulated as insurance. Treating them as securities is silly.Tom Hickeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08454222098667643650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-36322059289517183632009-09-30T05:42:02.155-07:002009-09-30T05:42:02.155-07:00Sometimes it just doesn't pay to get down in t...Sometimes it just doesn't pay to get down in the mud and wrestle with the monkeys. This question about CDSs is a question like, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" For which the honest answer is, "No, I have not stopped beating my wife, -yet-."<br /><br />Prather put it succinctly, -that duplicity of economists that think they have something up their sleeve that will benefit anyone, and not just their own vile, hocus-pocus careers.<br /><br />"This objective [of the Federal Reserve System] is to promote the orderly growth of production so that the people of the United States may have a rising standard of living and, at the same time, will be able to meet their foreign economic, military, and political commitments."<br /><br />Yes. That is what Prather said, piss-poor grammar and all.<br /><br />This stupendous statement is in the 6th edition of "Money and Banking" printed in 1957. HFJ! That's why I read well-dated books. They all too often tell the unmistakable truth.<br /><br />These are all loaded questions, -and questions entirely made of loaded assumptions.<br /><br />We now know from experience, observation, the smell of burning human flesh all around us, as well as an easy logical and historic deduction about the many decades-long declining standard of living of Americans and everyone else on the planet, -that an "orderly growth of production" is not just a fantasy, it eventually will turn into an entirely unsustainable death-wish.<br /><br />Whether coming from either the Tweedle-dum or the Tweedle-dee of modern western economic thought -Marx of Mises-, economics is in both cases meant to provide a leading-the-loopy-losers efficiency in the economic sense Prather has so well iterated for each of us to gawk at in disbelief. WTF!<br /><br />In either case Marx-or-Mises -this efficiency is geared toward beating our wives.<br /><br />Onward and upward has always meant toppling over and crashing back to earth too. And in the pursuit of the nirvana of economic bliss -the growth itself- is a heinous Utopian mirage.<br /><br />The credit economy is the Nitroglycerin meant to supercharge this efficiency intended to hurry-along all the economic-morons bent on an impossible endless growth.<br /><br />CDSs are merely a natural extension of this ultimately insane and suicidal notion of the credit economy.<br /><br />The ignorant genius who thought it up hadn't invented "obsessive-compulsive" until I was well into my 40s, but this is as classic a case of obsessive-compulsive disorder as we're ever going to be able to imagine.<br /><br />When the credit-system collapses, it is no less destructive for any individual -if his own ability to pay his debts at any time forces him off the road of happiness and into the ditch of despair, than it is for the vast majority caught up in the temblor of a massive credit-economy-quake.<br /><br />Even here in little Aroostook County -in idyllic northern Maine, God's country -as-they-call-it, a REMAX realtor blew his brains out just last week with a shotgun -leaving a splattered-spaghetti-like slurry for others to clean up. <br /><br />Debt is a powerful anti-aphrodisiac for your natural love of life.<br /><br />Oh, I know... He should've known better.<br /><br />JFC the next time I hear that expression uttered by some Libertarian...<br /><br />We all should've known better than to let this credit economy thing become so ingrained in our ethic, the false and delusional ethic of growth at any cost.<br /><br />Star Trek is a television fantasy, kids. Star Trek and modern science are both fantasies.<br /><br />What's the rush? Just where is anyone going so fast?<br /><br />Put your feet up and enjoy life.<br /><br />And when someone offers you credit, -thank them. -And then do the world a big favor.<br /><br />Kick them as hard as you can, and -so they remember, -right in the nuts.<br /><br />That's how the world works, Emily Post.Don Robertsonhttp://cid-fefedf4316fe7e11.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/pictures/selftimeddad%20-%203.JPGnoreply@blogger.com